Exploration of Sounds

You will develop your knowledge in listening, creating and transforming sounds.

Playing with sounds and sound transformation is one of the best ways to learn how sounds work. It will give you a feeling for how sounds function, and help you to make your own sounds that could be used in a later project.

Extra

Reverse

Playing a sound backwards is a really simple idea, but it makes radical changes to what we hear. What used to be at the end of the sound is now at the beginning, and what used to be at the beginning is now at the end.

Fact

The shape of a sound’s envelope makes up a large part of the sound that we hear. By reversing a sound, we flip this envelope.

Reverse transformations create entirely new sounds that do not exist naturally. This tool is really good for creating sounds that are mysterious or unrecognisable. You could reverse a whole soundscape and it would sound completely alien, or you could reverse only a few individual sounds within a normal soundscape – this might create a really mysterious, yet familiar soundscape.

Loop

Again, to loop a sound is one of the most simple transformations, but it can be one of the most effective. When a sound is looped, we begin to forget the identity of the original source and start to hear the internal qualities of the sound.

Fact

Both loop and reverse were early transformations that Pierre Schaeffer was very interested in. By experimenting and thinking about what was happening to sounds, they allowed him to discover and theorise how sounds worked.

Tranpose

The transposition tool allows us to change the pitch of sounds. We can make sounds higher in pitch (transpose up) or make sounds lower in pitch (transpose down). Transposition can be used to create new sounds, and can also give the impression that the objects causing the sound are changing in siz